Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller
Canada
is America’s neighbour, and when it comes to films, a quiet achiever of the
entertainment industry. Much smaller in size and scale compared to the amount
and scope of films that come out of the USA. So how I came to know about a film
from there called "Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller", is still a
mystery to this day. But I loved the film and its whole idea of a boy who
travels the world inside a stamp.
I
never collected stamps as a kid myself, but I came from a time where kids my
age did collect stamps. It was a smart investment to make when you were young,
as later in life, a vast collection of stamps of varied amounts and designs
would be worth a lot one day. Apparently, if a stamp has a mistake in its
design, it’s worth even more. Tommy Tricker, our films main character, knows
this and he knows stamps. He’s an avid collector, with the plan of selling them
to kids in the schoolyard. Tommy’s school mate Albert, is the President of the
Stamp Collecting Society, who accuses Tommy of being a con man, selling his
co-students stamps that are nowhere near the amount he’s claiming. And Albert
isn’t far wrong, as Tommy uses his cool street smarts and juvenile punk
attitude to trick other kids into trading stamps. Kind of a contrast that a kid
that’s sort of a badass should collect and know so much about stamps, but
Hey!
Going
around to his mate Ralph’s house after school one day, Tommy manages to nab a
rare stamp that belongs to Ralph’s dad. Ralph is a nervous kind of kid, who
struggles to speak with his stutter, and doesn’t catch on to Tommy’s sneaky
stories. Running off with it, Tommy has no idea how special this stamp is.
Taking it to a local stamp collecting store, Tommy sells it for $300.
Tricking’s his name, and stamps are his game. Although it’s a good business for
him, it will also be the game that gets him into a crazy situation.
Ralph
and his sister Nancy try to get the stamp back before their dad finds out its
gone. They can’t afford to buy it back, so the store owner gives them an album
of stamps as consolation. Hidden inside it is an old letter, written a long
time ago by an eleven year old boy called Charles who invites whoever finds his
letter to go searching for his treasure. The siblings go to Albert to figure
out what the letter and unusual stamp collection mean. Through further
exploration, the kids discover there is a spell they can say which will shrink
them to size smaller than an ant, and ride a stamp to anywhere in the world.
Their destination – Sydney, Australia where Charles claims his treasure lies in
wait to be discovered.
Ralph
is the first to volunteer, speaking the spell and being zapped into a stamp on
a letter. Unable to put it in the mailbox themselves, some random man picks the
letter up off the ground and takes off with it. And so the adventure begins!
The
letter with the stamp on it gets thrown out of a window, kicked along the
street, and thrown into a bin, while Ralph tries to call out with his tiny
voice for help. Through a series
of
random events, Tommy ends up with the letter and stamp that’s holding Ralph
trapped inside it. Tommy then offers to help and mails the letter for Nancy and
Albert, sending poor little Ralph on his way to the Land Down Under. Glad to be
on his way, Ralph is surprised when he makes a stop in China. Luckily he gets
some help from a Chinese boy who knew about the letter coming to him. He will
help Ralph continue on his journey to Australia.
The
pit stop in China is an unusual one, and watching this film again recently made
me think the producers did some deal with the Chinese film industry to show
it’s true colours, and promote it as something of a tourist destination to the
Canadians. None the less, Ralph learns a thing or two about courage so he can
find the guts to be zapped into a stamp again, and be on his way.
Arriving
at his final destination, Ralph meets a young Aussie girl called Cheryl, who is
the granddaughter of the man who wrote the magic letters all those years ago.
She helps him to track down the treasure, which takes them to a remote house in
the bush. They then run into the last person Ralph would expect to see on the
other side of the world – Tommy! He’s discovered the secret of stamp travelling
and is on a mission to steal more stamps that he shouldn’t. The kids run into a
spot of bother as they get chased around by an Aboriginal man, played by Ernie
Dingo!
Tommy
Tricker and the Stamp Traveller is an odd little film but has its own charming
appeal. It’s imaginative and original, if not exactly coherent and the acting
from the kids is shoddy at best. But it is a kid’s film after all, and I
remember enjoying this a lot when I was younger. Probably because it was
different and it featured Australia for a good portion of it’s running time.
It’s not like the kids films of America, so maybe in my younger years I was
just starting to explore all kids of different films – Canada certainly made
it’s impression on me with this funny flick as well as The Peanut Butter
Solution. They could be the reason why I became a fan of Degrassi Junior High
in the early nineties ;-)
This
is a rare film, and I couldn’t find it DVD or get it downloaded. Thank God for
YouTube as just days before I wanted to watch it, some good sport uploaded the
whole film. If you’d like to check it out for yourself, you can watch it here. Hurry before it gets taken down.
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